I thought Burke was okay when he handed over this beauty. Burke was not okay.That suit from a couple days ago, goes by the name of Burke, has been poking around my neck of the woods. First he was just measuring different freezers. I figured he knew what he was doing so I left him alone.

Then today he waltzed in on us with his popped collar and started asking questions. The guy has "middle management douche" written all over him in 20- point Helvetica, but that's still above my pay grade so I answered his dumb questions. And they were dumb.

"Can a hypersleep chamber accommodate something with an exoskeleton?"

I asked him if he meant one of the powerloaders and he said, no, he meant something more like a human-sized bug. I told him that I've seen bugs wake up from inside a hypersleep chamber all the time, but unless he had a bug handy the same size as a person I couldn't say for sure.

"What about acid? Say these insects have acid for blood, could they still freeze for hypersleep?"

Acid for blood. I may be a cryotech grease monkey, but I figured out what this Burke asshole was talking about right away. He wanted to freeze Ripley's crew-eating alien.

"Look," I told Burke, "There's no way for me to be sure on something like that unless you have a specimen for me. If you can measure the pH value of its blood you can recalibrate the controls, but that sort of thing isn't easy, even on the newest point-and-freeze models."

Burke seemed unhappy with my answer.

I said to him, "Between you and me, if you crank the coolant field up to about 200% you should be able to force hypersleep. Make sure this bug is sedated though. Hypersleep capsules were not built to force something into relaxing. There are some kennel carriers or perishable freight capsules I could suggest if-"

Burke told me that would be fine and added that I should keep our conversation between the two of us. Oh, yeah, can't wait to gather the boys around and tell them the amazing tail of our fantastic adventure into the realm of the imagination. Thanks for warning me away from that.

4.7.2179.PERSONAL

Trust me, there's a piece of crap colony in there somewhere.Been trying to get a hold of an old buddy of mine from the Costaguana days. Good guy by the name of Russ Jorden. Last I heard he was married with two kids and had set up on some rock called Acheron. Still lists as LV-426 in my piece of crap computer down here in cryotech, but I'm sure it's the same place.

I've sent him about ten c-mails over the past week and a half and I haven't heard anything back. I figured I'm not gonna have enough money to retire on Micor, so I should start looking around to see what's out there. I was asking Russ what he thought of the digs there on Acheron, but if the guy is going to be an asshole and not respond to any of my messages then fuck him.

I hope everyone in his family gets the worst STD in the universe. Megaherpes or something. I'm sure there's something worse than that out there. The universe is a big place.